With these articles we aim to supply answers to some
of the most commonly asked questions, and answers to the questions
you should be asking, as well as entertainment for people who have nothing
better to do but read about car care. If you can't find exactly what you
are looking for, use the site search at the top of the page, and if all
else fails, drop us a line!

Using wet towels to keep the paint from drying will make a clean-up easier. Once the spilt paint has dried everything becomes so much harder, parts may need replacing and these could take a long time to arrive.

If the paint is water based emulsion, then it is possible to clean up a paint spillage by mopping up, then slowly diluting and vacuum up the paint.

By Gary -26/11/2011

Ask the Experts

These are the latest questions asked on

We have a chair that is badly worn and would like to get it back to new looking. I do realise that you only do furniture but most of the domestic products seem a bit amateurish and not as good a finish as one would get by a car product... [more]

The body work is immaculate and shiny apart from this joint under the headlamp. Is it serious rust and very costly to fix? Spider rust? Will car need total respray?
South London
Model: rover mini... [more]

Can smart repair really save you money? (Prt 2). If a repair is done badly, it will cost you when you come to sell your car, and if you are returning it to a lease company you are likely to incur recharges, so you''ll pay twice.

This car smelt of body odour and dogs. We used enzymes to kill the smell. They work by eating protien which normally feeds the smelly bacteria... and when the bacteria starves to death, the enzymes eat them too.

By the time this was noticed, the car was begining to smell like a pond. We had to strip out the interior of the car in order to remove and dry the thick carpet underlay. We also used our odour kill system to decontaminate and remove the smell.

Most hoods don't need recolouring, as the reproofing usually makes them darker. Although this hood was quite faded, thorough cleaning and water-proofing was all it needed. This video shows how much cleaning is involved before a hood is reproofed.

The owner of this car sent us some photos through Ask the Experts to see if we could remove their dents with paintless dent repair. Because the dents were so harsh, we recommended that Kraftwork carry out a Midi-Repair at their bodyshop.

Paint spiltt in the back of a Ford Fiesta. Gloss spirit based paints are far harder to clean up than water based emulsion, but in this case we replaced many of the parts as they were readily and cheaply available from a breakers yard.

With paintless dent removal we removed four dents from the doors of this 350zx. We later machine polished this car so any blemishes would have shown up on the pristine paintwork, so it's important to remove imperfections like this before paintwork correction.

The best of the rest! We write articles about some
of the cars we restore, time permitting, but there are many other vehicles
that pass through our doors. We take photos that get filed away in our
archive, sometimes because we don't have before and after shots. Here is
a collection of snaps of some really nice cars and the folks who work on
them. It gives a good idea of what we do here.

As photos become available, I will be posting short pages giving actual examples of smart repairs on interiors. I hope to be able to cover plastic, vinyl, leather and carpet repair in the not too distant future.

Believe it or not, it actually fooled a few people - and we had great fun writing it.

By Danny Argent - 1st April 2006

Product Reviews

Company and Product reviews
As much as we would like to, we can't do everything! We often find ourselves
referring our customers to other companies in related industries. In this
section we will showcase their work, because it's fantastic work that
they do!

Daily Valeting Tip

Valeting & Car Care Trade secrets - Tip of the DayIf you have a motorcycle or classic car, if
you get caught in the rain, don't hurry to put your car in the garage.
The rain may be a bit acid, but it's nowhere as corrosive as the stuff
that splashes up from the road. So leave it out in the rain to rinse
off, and maybe hose your vehicle down before putting it in the garage.